To Rise Above….

Chaotic and full of haters? I call that a day at the office.

This post is highly metaphorical.

The helicarrier, Old School Style, represents what I want for my classroom. A fine educator advised me to “make a utopia above it all.” In my comics colored world, that means a helicarrier…a state authorized and funded secure facility that floats above the world, and thus, is separated from it.

Still…as much as I might want a utopia above the clouds, or at least above the ground floor, there will always be haters. Some are kids, who seem at odds with the system of education. Others are adults, who don;t feel the urgency of fixing a broken system, of helping the students in an immediate sense. All of them are damaging to what we are setting forth, to the basic effort of education.

The art is about that. It’s about the effort to keep the haters and conflict from the floor that I teach upon, keeping the area free of haters of all kinds. That’s what the flying Datsun 280 ZX is about…the effort to keep things below, the effort to stem the tide. Stemming the tide is key, so that my students can actually reap the benefits of a free public education. That only happens when we keep an area of calm, of peace, that they can observe.

From day to day, that sadly gets harder. The art above is about the metaphorical struggle to keep the foulness below, and preserve the utopia above. After all…that is out job…to keep the haters out, and the cleverness in.